Friday, January 29, 2010

Fab Find Friday: POM Wonderful

We discovered Pomegranates about 4 years ago when my son was just a baby. We had told ourselves that we had to start expanding our culinary horizons so that our children would be better, more adventurous eaters than me (we had some pretty picky genes to combat!). That first experience was messy, but delicious! We were stained red, there were splatters of red everywhere, it looked like a crime scene! We were hooked, even through all the work we fell in love with this fruit and anxiously awaited the short season where we could get it fresh. We also learned how to open it without making such a huge mess! Now since my children are part fruit bat they too have grown to love pomegranate in all varieties. We even used to use it as an incentive to get a young and picky child to eat dinner. One pomegranate seed for each bite of meat, it worked wonders! So when POM Wonderful contacted me and asked if I would like to try some of their 100% POM Wonderful juice, perhaps try a few recipes...well I couldn't say no!

The wonderful people at POM wonderful sent me 8, 8oz containers of their POM wonderful juice and we have been slowly going through the stash, I have 4 bottles left so be on the lookout for more recipes!

Before I get on to the recipes I want to give you some facts from POM wonderful:

POM Wonderful is the only brand that using domestic, and only domestic, Pomegranates. All of their juice is made from POM Wonderful Pomegranates (a variety of pomegranate, think concord grape) that are grown in California's San Joaquin Valley

POM Wonderful is the only brand guaranteed to contain 100% authentic pomegranate juice.

For more information on all the studies and health benefits of the pomegranate, please go here.

I spent a good long time on the POM Wonderful website drooling over all the deliciousrecipes looking for ideas and inspiration. See we are kind of fruit purists here (okay lazy is probably a better description better) and pretty much stick to making drinks (hubbies recipe for POM martini and spritzer coming next) and eating the pomegranate out of a bowl by the handful. I knew if I was going to pry the pomegranate out of my kids hands I was going to need to start with a dessert.

Since it was New Years by the time I got healthy enough to manage to try something I decided to make them their own "POM Mock-tails". I originally wanted to making sparkling Jell-o with pomegranate juice, however I wasn't sure how well it would come out and so we stuck with the basic recipe. I took one box of cranberry Jell-o and it made it per package instructions, except I substituted the cold water for pomegranate juice. I then added the "sparkle" by adding actual pomegranate Arils to the Jell-o, much like our grandmas used to add can fruit to their Jell-o. Since it was New Years Eve we were being fancy and I made them in tall soda glasses. The kids LOVED it! It also makes a dessert with not a lot of nutritional value a serving of a very healthy fruit!

Sadly I have a crummy camera right now and this is the best picture I could get of the actual dessert:

Like I said, I have 4 bottles left and am going to try some other recipes soon, I will post those soon. Tonight I will post more "hubby's recipes" with his recipe for a POM-tini and POM Spritzer.

If you haven't tried pomegranates or POM Wonderful juice yet I suggest you head to the store this weekend, because you don't know what your missing!

* I was provided with a case of POM Wonderful 100% juice for this review but all opinions expressed are my own. I was not compensated in any other way for the opinions expressed. Top image from POM Wonderful, bottom image property of Peantbutterinmyhair.blogspot.com.